Need access to nuclear plants? Try Warwick's flying robot

This article was taken from the March 2013 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online.

Unmanned vehicles are ideal for dangerous jobs -- exploring a nuclear reprocessing plant, for instance. A small unmanned helicopter could fly in ahead of the cleanup operation and check out buildings, some of which haven't been touched for decades, without risk to humans.

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Stefan Winkvist, a Warwick Manufacturing Group PhD student at the University of Warwick, is developing an unmanned aerial inspection vehicle (UAIV) that could do the job, based on the commercial HexaKopter. The challenge is to navigate indoors in an uncertain environment, away from GPS and an operator. Winkvist, 26, has fitted the craft with laser-based radar, which produces a 3D image of its surroundings. Combined with other sensors, this helps build a map of the site as it goes, so the craft can avoid walls and other obstacles.

Gallery: Need access to nuclear plants? Try Warwick's flying robot

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"One of the biggest challenges has been to reduce the amount of processing power needed so the whole operation can run on the on-board computer," says Winkvist. The UAIV has lights and a GoPro digital camera to send high-resolution images to a laptop control unit. It also knows what to do if it loses contact with its operator. "If it is flying in a thick-walled building and it encounters a radio shadow, it can retrace its steps to where it last got a good signal," says Winkvist. He aims to deliver a working prototype by the end of 2013, ready to go where no drone has gone before.